Ambient occlusion is actually a lighting concept that describes the darkening of…surfaces in crevices and areas were two surfaces meet.…So in this render you can see ambient occlusion shadowing appears as the…surfaces get close together or in these corners.…Fewer photons of light actually reach these areas of the surface and so you…see it as darkening.…This is known as ambient occlusion shadowing.…It's something that happens usually in an ambient lighting environment like an overcast day.…Now this is a lighting concept, but mental ray allows you several options for…creating ambient occlusion.…

You can create it as part of the lighting setup or you can actually build it…within your shader network, or you can actually do both at the same time.…So this is a concept that's important to understand because it affects the…lighting on the surface and it also affects the way light is reflected from a…surface, because this is an example right here of ambient occlusion shadowing.…But there is also the concept of reflection occlusion.…

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9/28/2010

Creating Textures and Shaders in Maya with Eric Keller shows how to create textures and materials, and then apply them to models to render realistic surfaces. The course covers working with the mental ray shading nodes, including the mental images architectural node, subsurface scattering nodes, occlusion, and car paint shaders, as well as how to incorporate these nodes into shading networks using the Hypershade editor. It also explores using textures, Maya software nodes, normal maps, and displacement maps for adding detail to models. Exercise files accompany the course.